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Power and Pleasure

Louis Barthou and the Third French Republic

Robert J Young author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:McGill-Queen's University Press

Published:30th Oct '91

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Power and Pleasure cover

Neither Barthou's contemporaries nor subsequent historians have known quite what to make of this bourgeois politician who fought a duel with Jean Jaures and flew with Wilbur Wright. Many concluded he was an individual of considerable talent, few principles, and excessive ambition. No one, reading Power and Pleasure, can maintain that view. Robert Young, constructing a complete picture of Barthou, effectively refutes the charge of unprincipled ambition and deftly deals with the tension between political principles and pragmatism. Young has written a social biography, situating Barthou's life -- both public and private -- in the political and cultural context of the Third Republic. Barthou was a centrist in his politics and, while current scholarship maintains that centrists adopted regressive strategies in response to the social question, Young presents an alternative reading of their position. He argues that although centrists like Barthou were not socialists -- for them "bourgeois" was a positive term -- they were capable of adjusting their ideals to meet the social changes of modern France. Barthou's turbulent political career was tempered both by a thirty-five-year marriage to his supportive wife and by a lifetime of pleasure derived from music, art, history, books, and literature.

"Quite simply, brilliant. The book starts off on a lively note and sustains it throughout. The research is exhaustive and impeccable. Beautifully written ... the style is closer to that of an elegant novel than to the prosaic style of most historical monographs ... [Young's book] ought to be required reading for anyone embarking on a study of French politics." William Irvine, Glendon College, York University. "This is a first-rate piece of work ... well-conceived, well-documented, and extraordinarily well-written ... Young has succeeded in his aim of providing a "full portrait" of Barthou. This is biography in the best of styles." John Laffey, Department of History, Concordia University.

ISBN: 9780773508637

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

352 pages